26 April 2008  |  Misc

Sunshine!

I have to say it was pretty nice to wake up to sunshine this morning. It was nice and cool when I rode over to the course to get a few hard laps in. The course has really dried out a lot and it was much more fun to ride today. It´s a challenging course with plenty of steep ups and downs and lots of singletrack- I´m sure it will be a challenging race no matter what the conditions are.

Yesterday, after having lunch at an amazing Italian restaurant, we headed into Offenburg (we are staying in a hotel outside of town) to check out the downtown. It´s a beautiful little town with some walking-only areas and lots of shops and restaurants. Mom and I found the Offenburg natural history museum which had some pretty interesting stuff in it- everything from stuffed birds to stuffed lions (those had seen better days) to minerals, art (european and african), clothing, old books and reliquaries (I had never seen a reliquary before- they are essentially pieces of religious people (St. Peter´s teeth, St. Paul´s bones, St. so-and-so´s fingernails…) encased in a little shrine with all kinds of colorful jewels and ribbons- pretty creepy stuff). It was a cool little museum. After that we headed back to the hotel for dinner.

Hopefully on Monday we can explore downtown a little more- I´m sure we haven´t even scratched the surface. But for now I am focusing on tomorrow, and looking forward to another good hard race!